We at The American Prospect are starting a new podcast called Prospect: Generations in which younger and older staff discuss culture, politics, history, and more. In our debut episode, Prospect staff writer Lee Harris and co-founder Paul Starr debate whether and how generations matter for politics and culture. The two graduated from college a half-century apart, both in tumultuous times—Lee in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests for racial justice, and Paul in 1970, during the Vietnam War and cultural upheaval of that era.
Lee argues that generations are forged in crisis. Iconic generations, she says, typically bear the stamp of a war or another cataclysmic event. And she says there’s a fair bit of “generational resentment” on the part of later generations against the Baby Boomers, not only because they had it so good and accumulated so much wealth, but because “we inherited the political mistakes” they made—particularly their “cultural and identitarian turn.”
Paul defends that turn in the Sixties as necessary and valuable and, against Lee’s skepticism that things have improved, claims that the movements for racial, LGBT and women’s rights have made genuine progress. But have we come full circle back to the worries of the post-World War II era, facing a new Cold War and similarly intractable cultural ressentiment? Should young progressives be hopeful or pessimistic? Listen here to find out, or on Soundcloud, or via RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Music credit: Oleksandr Stepanov from Pixabay.
